Paolo Cherchi, Professor Emeritus in the Department of Romance Languages and Literatures, has been elected “Socio Straniero” of the Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei. It is the highest academic recognition bestowed in Italy.

The Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei has a long history of recognizing influential scholarship. Founded in 1603, their membership includes the founder of modern science Galileo Galilei. Today, the Accademia continues to acknowledge influential and prodigious scholars from around the world. Cherchi will be the third member of the Humanities Division at the University of Chicago, after the philosopher Richard McKeon and literary scholar Wayne Booth, to receive the Accademia’s honor.

Cherchi has published a vast number of scholarly pieces. Currently, his CV lists 422 entries. Of these publications, 14 are books, 3 are major editions, 2 are translations, several are collections of his essays, and 320 are articles and notes. His main areas of interest are the Medieval and Renaissance literatures of Romance Languages as well as Romance Philology, textual criticism, literary theory, history of ideas and comparative literature. Numbers aside, the Accademia dei Lincei considers Cherchi’s work worthy of the highest recognition.

“I am pleased and profoundly grateful to the Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei, the highest cultural institution of my native country, for inducting me among its members,” says Cherchi. “This election implies a recognition of the quality of Italian studies in this country, and especially in the Humanities Division at the University of Chicago that has had some of the greatest scholars of Italian studies, such as Ernst Hutch Wilkins, Giuseppe Antonio Borgese and Bernard Weinberg.”